PCD invites authors to submit manuscripts on research, evaluation, and other work describing innovative and effective work to link health care and community health in ways that improve population health. Chronic diseases are a major cause of poor health outcomes, reduced quality of living, and increased health care costs worldwide. Reducing the burden of chronic disease remains a global challenge requiring diverse collaborations and diffusion and adoption of effective interventions in multiple settings. Emerging approaches have encouraged the use of combined individual and population-based approaches within and across health care and community settings. Innovative ways to work in and across settings are necessary to simultaneously address behavior, provide access to quality health care, address underlying social and environmental factors shaping health, and measure progress more easily and accurately on those issues. Over the past decade, there have been a range of innovative community- and clinically-driven prevention strategies (primary and secondary) designed to prevent and reduce the burden of chronic conditions worldwide. PCD invites manuscripts that provide timely information on jointly implemented public health and health care efforts to improve population health.

•Health care system (hospitals, federally qualified health systems, etc) and public health agency (local and state health department) working jointly to conduct needs assessment to identify and implement shared health improvement goals based on findings from the assessment.

•Identification and execution of care coordination models (resources) that support patients’ abilities within healthcare and community settings to optimally manage chronic conditions.

•Using trained community health workers as critical members in the delivery of team-based care to improve patient satisfaction, increase follow-up, and increase referral to disease management opportunities in community settings.

•Health care and public health strategies to identify individuals of highest risk for hospitalization to yield the greatest success in reducing health care cost, and improving and documenting improvements in health outcomes.

•Implementation and evaluation of health communication strategies (derived from diverse partnerships) to educate patients and the public about local efforts to improve population health through education, prevention, treatment, referral, and coordination.

•Identifying ways of using health care and public health data to guide the integration of clinical and public health approaches that address high cholesterol and blood pressure, physical inactivity, diets low in fruits and vegetables, and diets high in sodium and saturated fats.

•Identifying and implementing monitoring systems that simultaneously track disease burden and health improvements in clinical and community settings.

Submission Guidelines: Manuscripts should be submitted to PCD on or before Friday, November 16, 2018. Manuscripts submitted in response to this call for papers will be reviewed and, if accepted, published on a rolling basis. Articles will be assembled into a PDF collection accessible on the PCD website after all accepted papers have been published. PCD welcomes submissions that address a broad range of health conditions (eg, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, obesity, asthma, arthritis, oral health, reproductive health, alcohol abuse, mental health) and their risk factors, with application to a wide range of settings (access to care, health equity, policy and program development, evaluation).

Manuscripts must follow the instructions for PCD article types. Further information on submitting a manuscript is available in PCD’s Author’s Corner. Cover letters to the Editor in Chief are required and must state that the submission is for consideration in the PCD collection: “Health Care Systems, Public Health, and Communities: Population Health Improvements.” CDC’s Leonard Jack, Jr, Editor in Chief, Peter A. Briss, Medical Director of NCCDPHP, and Lloyd Michener, MD, Professor in the Department of Community & Family Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, will serve as coeditors of this collection. Please contact pcdeditor@cdc.gov for questions about appropriate topics.